Imagine a world without emotions. How would that look? It would resemble a dystopia, where humanlike robots walk around devoid of smiles, connection, or feeling. Emotions are part of being human and we need to experience every emotion that the human body produces. We can’t pick and choose the emotions we want to experience while discarding the others. Life doesn’t work that way. All emotions are essential and are within us for a reason. The good, the bad, the ugly.
Dr. Becky Kennedy “reminds parents that it’s impossible to simply remove your children’s uncomfortable feelings. You can’t tell them to stuff them down. You can’t gaslight them into thinking they aren’t there. You can’t make like so wonderful and fun that they’re never sad or angry or jealous or frustrated.” This advice applies not just to children but to everyone. We need to understand that what we feel is normal. When we understand that these feelings are part of being human and don’t set us apart from others, we can better cope with our emotions. We will become more knowledgeable and with more knowledge we can get better control.
Understanding our emotions doesn’t mean everything will be easy. Some feelings are hard to handle, but they’re necessary. They are a message from our body and we need to learn the meaning of those messages. Before we can teach others, like parents teaching children, how to regulate emotions, we need to learn our own. We need to know what are our triggers when we feel joy, anger and sadness and what are our reactions. The underlying response to our emotions starts the same way via chemical reactions. Although it starts the same way for all of us the response to the feeling is what is unique about it. Understand why you react a particular way once you feel an emotion.
The emotions will come whether we suppress them or not. It’s important to explore the feelings even though it’s uncomfortable and dreadful. It might be easier to ignore the reactions and emotions in the short term but catastrophic in the long term. If children suppress their emotions, they’ll be unprepared for the challenges of life. And trust me, it will get tough. Dr. Becky Kennedy writes, “Adults whose childhood were focused mostly on happiness are not only unprepared for tough moments, they experience more discomfort in those tough moments because deep down they think they’re doing something wrong if they can’t find the ‘happy’ and get themselves to a better place.”
It’s never too late to learn about yourself, but it might take time if you haven’t reflected on your emotions for a while, or ever. Regardless, it takes time to understand why you react a certain way, what triggers you and understand why others react differently than you. We are unique individuals with different experiences therefore the world we live in affects us differently. If you are fed up with the way you react to certain situations, write out how you felt and how you reacted. Discover yourself and find those patterns.
Emotions are there to guide us. If you understand what your emotions mean, you’ll likely know how to control them and why they’re present. You don’t need to be a robot. Be human and experience everything it has to offer which includes all emotions, the comfortable and uncomfortable ones.
Take care.